Hello friends, old and new! Several months ago, I saw an idea on Pinterest from Copper Diem to make earrings out of paint chips, and since I'm on somewhat of a paint chip kick (they're free, and I can experiment with different color combinations with no commitment) I finally got around to trying the chandelier style earrings she did! However, since "Crafty Quickies" is supposed to be 15-minute crafts, and the chandelier style ones took me about half an hour, I came up with a couple different paint-chip style ones you can do in 15-minutes or less.

Now, there are two ways you can interpret "15-minute crafts." Does it take 15 minutes to do the craft, or is planning and clean-up included in that time? I chose to include planning and clean-up in the 15 minutes, but I also already know how to make jewelry, so it might not have taken me as long… Anywho, enough with the formalities, on to the Crafty Quickie!

Materials

• Paint chips of your color choice
• Paper punch of your choice (mine was a 1" from JoAnns for about $4)
• Eyelets (I got a package of 100 at Hobby Lobby for under $1 after the coupon)
• Eyelet puncher/setter (borrowed from a friend)
• Scissors
• Jump rings (from my jewelry stash)
• Chain (not pictured) (from my jewelry stash)
• Ear hooks (from my jewelry stash)
• Needle nose pliers (for cutting the chain and manipulating the jump rings)

You can see that I timed myself making the earrings… I tried to be somewhat speedy, but keep in mind that since I was setting up shots (and messing up/starting over a few times) the actual time on my phone (yes, I was doing this after 10 pm…) won't be consistent. We will be making the yellow and grey earrings in the top photo, with yellow being color A and grey being color B.

Directions

1. Punch out four circles of color A and two of color B. Cut B in half.

2. Stack up all your As and Bs so that they're as lined up as possible. Eyeball the best place to punch your eyelet hole, and do so.

3. This is the trickiest step! I found it easiest to put the pieces onto the eyelet (B-facing-down, A-facing-down, A-facing-up, B-facing-up) and then put the whole thing into the eyelet punch at once, but you should do what you think is easiest. Make sure your bottom pieces are lined up before you punch! There's a chance you can twist them to where you want them after you squeeze the eyelet on, but don't count on it.

4. Add an odd number of chain links to a jump ring, and then to each eyelet. If you do an even number, the paper will face the wrong way when it's hanging from your ear!

5. Add an ear wire to the other end of each chain. Voila!

This took me less than seven minutes to put together, but if you count pulling out materials, figuring out what I wanted to do, and cleanup, it was probably right around 15. Or, you can just make another pair of earrings for a friend!

Variations & Things I Learned

• For the pink and navy earrings, I just used two different sized punches, and instead of chain, I bent a piece of metal to have two eye hooks with a bead in the middle. I made sure the eyes were facing different directions, and the awesome pink beads I used are called Miracle Beads.
• If you want to use dark-colored paint chips, be prepared to either ink the edges with a matching color ink pad or have the white show through (see the pink and navy earrings at the end in the first picture).
• Don't be afraid to punch out more circles than you need. If you mess up (cut the B color not quite in half, punch the eyelets crooked, etc) it's a lot easier to replace it if you don't have to pull out your puncher and paint chips again.
• Experiment experiment experiment! I had three good designs (see above) but I also had three that didn't turn out so great. If I had given up after the first one that didn't turn out, all I'd have would be the chandelier paint chips! (Which, if you're wondering, take about half an hour to put together.) In fact, here's an out-of-focus cell phone picture of the first idea I had for the grey and yellow earrings…

Don't you feel better about yourself? Now go find 15 minutes and make your own!

(P.S. I actually added some stuff to my ETC page, including some information if you want a blog redesign!)